And We Walked . . .

We did something a little different this year: we formed an official team for fundraising, Team Booby and the Beast. It was so official, we had shirts made.

My team included my best friend in the world, Alana, who reminded me we've been friends for going on twenty years; Shelby, another amazing woman I've known half my life; and Ginelle, who's married to my husband's best friend from childhood.

The four of us raised an impressive $16,065.29. Yep, that's me tooting our own horn. What can I say? I'm proud of us. Thank you to all our generous supporters for making this happen. The San Francisco walk alone raised $4 million this year for research and support services, including chemo and diagnostic tests for those who can't afford it. 

I want you to know a little more about these teammates of mine, these women who come out year after year to wreck their feet with me and beg their networks for donations so that one day, we can say we helped end this disease.

Alana came to visit me when I had my last round of chemo #1, and got my news that Christmas that my first post-chemo scan was squeaky clean. She is the only person who's been with me to the dingy part of the hospital where I used to have my PET scans (lucky her). On the walk, Alana is the one who will suggest jogging for a bit to change up the muscles you're using (and the thing is, it actually works). She spotted the girls handing out mimosas at mile 24, and made sure we all stopped to grab a cup. When we realized the buses to the start left at 5 a.m. on day one, she suggested we Uber it to the start instead, which meant we got to sleep in until 5:30. Also, she designed our team shirts. In short, she makes my life easier and more fun and far more beautiful.

Shelby is a friend from college, one of the women who cut off her hair to make a wig for me. She is also a researcher at Genentech, and was the first person who made me feel at all better about the fact that I had Stage 4 breast cancer. She talked to me about Herceptin and gave me confidence that I could do this. Shelby is as emotional as I am, and wept with me as we crossed the finish line, the four of us holding hands. We were saved by the guy handing out free It's-its, a San Francisco ice cream cookie treat I'd never experienced but now crave daily. Shelby still reminds me that I'm doing this thing, this beating cancer thing, and almost more than anyone she makes me feel okay about my diagnosis. I'll write more on Shelby and Genentech in another post soon.

Ginelle hardly knew me three years ago, beyond the fact that I'd married her husband's best friend, but when I was diagnosed she left her family to come visit and cook meals for our family. Last fall, she treated me to a weekend at Canyon Ranch, which has to be the most relaxing place on earth. I'm pretty sure we'd have been friends regardless, but cancer sped up that process. Some people run away from the burning building; Ginelle is the type to run straight into it carrying ice water and oxygen masks.

Ginelle is so prepared, we dubbed her the team girl scout. She kept us supplied with electrolyte powders and gummies, bandaids, body glide to prevent blisters, mole skin when we got them anyway, scissors, foam rollers, Advil, Epsom salts, and things we'd never even heard of, like silicone toe caps that I probably should have used, given the state of my toenails right now. She kept us on schedule in the mornings and ahead of the pack so that we were even the first to use some of the port-a-potties on day two.

All four of us, our feet hurt. We had blisters and bruised toenails, sore bunions and throbbing arches. We were chafed where our sports bras rubbed too tightly. Our hips and knees ached, especially walking down those steep Marin County hills. We were so exhausted we were delirious and punch drunk.

Which may explain why we immediately signed up for another year. We'll be going back to my old stomping grounds and walking in DC the first weekend of May, 2015. We'd love it if you'd join us, too.

My Writing Process

Chris and I recently finished construction of a two-car garage (and conversion of our existing one-car garage into a mother-in-law suite). It was a several months-long project that finished up just in time for us to park under cover before the steering wheels became third-degree burn hazards. 

When I’d moved to Phoenix after law school in the summer of 2008, I hitched a U-Haul trailer to my car and towed it across the country, that 124 cubic feet holding everything I owned in the world. Chris had a small apartment’s worth of stuff, and we combined our belongings--as couples do--but had a number of boxes and bins that neither of us unpacked. We had a storage closet, and that’s where these things went. Later, we moved to a slightly larger apartment, then our first house, then this bigger house we’re in now, and still these bins and boxes of who-knows-what stayed sealed and on our to-do lists.  

During construction, we kept this extraneous stuff in storage along with other items--small furniture, our bikes, luggage--that had to be moved out of our house or garage to make way for the construction crew. So Chris made it a priority--a command really--that we would not move these bins and boxes back into our new garage without going through them first. 

When he was home between trips the last weekend of June, we spent a solid day while Quinn was at preschool making piles out of the contents of these containers: trash, donate, or keep. There were the bridesmaids dresses I’d worn in three separate weddings (none of which still fit, to my chagrin), all of the ski clothes I’ve owned since 1995 and haven’t used since before law school, several sets of duvet covers for that period in my twenties when it was the only way I could afford to redecorate, a good number of notebooks and saved exams from college, including the graded lab results from this catastrophe, and my journals, notes, and writings from creative writing classes I took in high school and college. 

I spent too long (stay on task, Campisano!) poring over these, wondering why I hadn’t focused more on my writing between then and cancer. Sure, I wrote advocacy letters and proposed legislation and, later, law school exams and a harmless-sounding “note” sixty pages long for law review. I wrote appeals to bankruptcy judges and proposed settlements and codes of conduct and policies on sexual harassment. But I wasn’t writing for myself.

Until my diagnosis.

And now I can’t stop writing for myself. 

Quinn and I are visiting my mother-in-law (more on my weekend walk in a few posts to come soon), and the fourteen year-old girl who lives across the street came over last week to entertain and play with Quinn. She wore a Batman bracelet I asked about. She told me the meaning, then said her “internet friend in Pennsylvania” had one just like it. 

I have those, too -- Internet friends, women I’ve never met (and a couple I have), whose stories are so woven into the fabric of my own story that when one asked me if I’d participate in this “Writing Process Blog Tour,” I didn’t hesitate even when I realized it was a chain letter-type thing, which are not my favorite. I didn’t hesitate because Joanna’s words so often speak to precisely what I’m feeling at the very moment I read them, it’s uncanny. I wanted to do this post, continue this thread, because I think our stories tether us to one another as human beings. 

Whether we are in Arizona or Tennessee or London or Nairobi, our stories connect us. This may be especially true in the cancer community. Stories inform, educate, offer solace, and call forth a cheering section. Stories can be an escape, an adventure, make us laugh, punch us in the gut, take us to faraway places, or bring us home. 

How and why I write now is intricately bound to this internet community and my friends who are also out there sharing their stories, putting on their brave faces. So I couldn’t help but do this post. 

Each of us bloggers was tasked with answering the following questions, then passing the torch on to three other writers/bloggers whose work we admire. Thanks for including me, Joanna.

1. What are you working on now?
The book, always the book. I’ve set a goal for myself to finish draft one by Labor Day, which seems so fitting. I’m also trying to keep this blog going, because I think it serves a different purpose--sharing pictures of Quinn, of course. I occasionally write for Huffington Post, or do guest blogs, too, which you can find here and here and here (!) this Friday, the 18th. There is also be a cool partnership in the works that I’m deeply excited about. 
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
There are loads of mommy-bloggers out there, but I don’t know of any others with Stage 4 cancer. And there are a lot of cancer bloggers out there, many of them moms, some of them also living with Stage 4 breast cancer, but the pool really starts to narrow when we get to that point. I hope I bring a unique perspective to this sphere; it is something I am always considering. When I start to doubt myself, I remember this adage: everything has been done, but not everything has been done by you. 
3. Why do I write what I do?
I hope it helps. I love it when I get a note from a stranger saying my writing hits home, that she feels less alone in her fears because of what I’ve shared, that she’s also learning to take it day-by-day. I also write for less altruistic reasons: I write because I feel antsy when I don’t, better when I do, and I believe that processing all of the shit I’ve been through helps clear it out of my system, helps me be healthier. 
4. How does my writing process work?
It usually starts with one sentence. It always starts with a sentence, but what I mean is sometimes the beginnings of an idea will come to me at the most arbitrary times, so I do what I can to write them down, those sparks. Like Joanna, I rely on the Notes function on my phone a lot. For my blog posts, once I have an idea in mind, I typically write through in one fell swoop in a couple of hours or less, usually at night after Quinn has gone to bed and the dishes have been done and Orange is the New Black has been watched. Most of the time, the post needs some editing, so I give it another look in the morning, if Quinn’s at school, or in the afternoon if he happens to nap in the car, or the next night -- whenever I can get to it, really. For whatever reason, the book is different. The familiar, conversational voice of the blog doesn’t seem to translate to that format quite the same. I want to give more detail, so I have to research notes and journals and emails I’ve sent to get the facts straight. My process when it comes to the book is more tedious. I also want to make sure I’m not completely plagiarizing myself, so I try not to tell every story the same way I told it here. It is more painstaking, but it also (I hope) will tell a more complete story than I’ve been able to on my blog. The blog is fun; the book is work. I love them both, but they are different beasts.

To pass the torch along . . .

The first is Emily McDaid, a dear friend of mine from college who writes suspense novels, runs a PR firm, and raises two young children with her husband in a suburb of Belfast, an ocean away from where she grew up. In a word, she’s superwoman. She writes frankly and honestly about writing fiction and the grueling, humbling self-publishing process. She writes about living and raising her children in Ireland, and how it compares (and sometimes doesn't) to her home in upstate New York. 

Second is Lara Huffman, who writes the blog Get Up Swinging. Lara is one of my aforementioned Internet friends, and we’ve never met in person but one of these days I want to share our stories over a beer, in person. She is a feisty breast cancer survivor and incredible writer whose snark I love so much. Lara writes about breast cancer not only as a survivor but as a woman who lost her mom to the disease at a terribly young age. I can’t wait to see what she’ll write next.  

Finally, Beth Gainer is another woman I met through the online breast cancer community. Like me, Beth is a mom. Beth writes about her experiences and emotional state after cancer (and how there's never truly an "after") and motherhood on her blog, Calling the Shots. She is also a professor, a published author, and a patient advocate (it’s what her book is about--how to navigate our complicated healthcare system in the face of a terrifying diagnosis). Her posts are always insightful, thought-provoking, and beautifully composed. 

Check out these writers, especially next week, when they'll be posting about their own writing process and introducing some of their favorite bloggers to keep this chain going. 

Easy, Breezy, Beautiful

What does pretty much everyone in Phoenix do this time of year, when it starts to rain mud, when the monsoons drop the temperature from a scorching 110 to a sweltering, steamy, oppressive 104? We get out of dodge, that's what. We head west, to the promise of the ocean and good wine and maybe even the need for a sweatshirt at night.

Quinn and I are no different. We're off to California to visit Grandma for a couple of days before I join Team Booby and the Beast for our 2-day, 39.3-mile walk through San Francisco and Marin County. I'll be posting about how the walk went, and reflecting again on why I walk (for Colleen and Brigid and Renee and Jennie and Lisa and Sarah and Cristin and Andrea and Rachel and Courtney and myself and so many more), next week. If you'd still like to support our team, you can donate before the weekend by clicking here. Thank you to all of you who've helped us raise more than $14,000 already.

Quinn and I will both be in for a treat when it is 30-40 degrees cooler when we land this afternoon:

It feels like I spent 90% of my day yelling. I think my patience for 3yo whining is inversely proportionate to the temperature outside (108)
— Jennifer Campisano (@JCampisano) July 9, 2014

Around the Web

I felt like I crawled across a finish line when Quinn finally fell asleep last night, even with my mom visiting last week to help lighten my load. Being a single parent is hard work (I know -- and it is hot in Phoenix, and the songs in Frozen are catchy), and I promise this is not a guilt trip, Chris. So my posting schedule is all over the place lately, but you guys are enjoying your summers at outdoor BBQs and lake homes and not reading blogs anyway, right?

For those of you still following along, here is what caught my attention on the web this week since my last one of these.

I kinda wish I'd done this.

Super early results, but exciting discoveries nonetheless.

"A study led by Princeton University researchers has revealed that the gene Metadherin - which is implicated in promoting the spread of breast cancer tumors - only stimulates tumor growth when the protein made by the gene interacts with a second protein known as SND1."

This sounds like a cartoon Quinn would want to watch: "Cyclotrons to the Rescue."

"Memorial Sloan Kettering has taken a leap into the future with the launch of a new cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator that will be used to produce radioactive molecules for PET imaging of cancers. The 44,000-pound instrument and the production facility built around it are expected to change the way our patients are diagnosed and treated by allowing doctors to examine and target tumors with increased precision."

One more breast cancer correlation to worry about...

Turns out there may be more than obesity and alcohol intake and the age you started menstruating and the age you had your first child (or whether you had children at all) and what deodorant you wear and how tight your bras are and now I'm just making things up (but you get the picture) to worry about when it comes to breast cancer risk. 

A test for non-hereditary breast cancer risk. (But will insurance cover it?)

And will the rate of prophylactic mastectomies rise as a result? I am not sure what I would have done had I known about my risk ahead of time, but that is probably a thought for another post.

A new treatment for Her-2+ breast cancers? 

"In further experiments on mice, they used another treatment called 264RAD to target this molecule and found it completely eradicated the tumours. They will now carry out trials on women to test how well this treatment works alongside Herceptin."

If you remember, Herceptin was one of the drugs I was on for more than twenty-one months. Kadcyla, the drug I'm on now, is a chemo piggy-backed to Herceptin. It seems to be working, but I am always on the lookout for new treatment options coming down the pike.

And speaking of crawling across a finish line...

Just 5 more days until my team and I walk nearly 40 miles in 2 days to highlight our masochism the fight against breast cancer. If you'd still like to contribute, just click the link above. Or buy me a beer at the finish line in San Francisco.

The Road Less Traveled

{photo credit}

At chemo yesterday, I got to chatting with the woman sitting in the chair next to mine. She was petite, with perfectly manicured nails (in contrast to my big toes that are holding on to the last of a pedicure from more than a month ago.) She apologized for her raspy voice, said it was probably the radiation to her throat and chest. I asked whether she had throat cancer.

"No -- lung cancer," she told me. "My gym just named me fitness woman of the month in January, my husband had surgery, and then I had this persistent cough that they told me was pneumonia. It was not pneumonia. I mean, I was going to spinning classes and walking eighteen rounds of golf and then this."

I asked if they'd caught it early -- cancer small talk.

"No, it's Stage 4," she said meekly.

"Mine was, too," I told her. "From the beginning. That was almost three years ago -- breast cancer."

She was at the infusion center for her first chemo, but had been too dehydrated to receive it, so was just getting fluids. She confessed she wasn't sure if she'd continue to fight the cancer, she was so scared at the prospect of chemo, although she admitted she'd thought radiation had been a piece of cake.

"I'm lucky," she went on. "I've had a full life. I'm seventy-six."

I just about fell out of my chair. This woman did not look like a 76-year-old. She looked like the fitness woman of the month, with porcelain skin and a cute blonde pixie cut.

"I was always so healthy, had my tonsils out when I was five, but that's been it," she went on, expressing to me what I've come to know far too well: that cancer doesn't always care whether you're otherwise healthy. That cells mutate, go rogue, form tumors for reasons we don't fully understand.

We spent the next couple of hours chatting intermittently. My friend Sandi came to sit with me and encouraged this woman -- she introduced herself as Grandma Sue ("That's my mom's name! She's coming to visit and take care of me this week," I shared) -- to go forward with chemo. We both did.

But it got me thinking about what I would do if I were forty years older than I am now. If I didn't have Quinn and Chris and my (relative) youth to want to stick around for. Would I still put up this much of a fight? Would I feel lucky at the life I'd lived, and be ready to let go, to give up this life? The concept scares the daylight out of me, so I didn't pursue that line of conversation with Sue.

Instead, I did the only thing that I know how to do: gave her a vote of confidence that if she's healthy otherwise, she'll be able to handle chemo. Promised her that the meds they give to combat side effects are truly remarkable. We told her to watch a marathon of "Downton Abbey" when the fatigue lays her flat on the couch.

Even as I was talking, part of me felt like I was chickening out, taking the easy, familiar route rather than dive into why Sue felt it would be okay if she stopped getting treatment. I wasn't comfortable talking about accepting death. Does that part come after a certain amount of time living in cancer land? (P.S. I would not make for a good hospice volunteer.)

At the end of the day, Sue's 82-year-old, equally fit husband came to pick her up. She introduced Sandi and me as the ones who'd been giving her a shot of courage, and I was flattered. Then her husband shook my hand and said, "Thank you."